Estimation and analysis of vehicle lateral stability region

Abstract

This paper discusses a new method of estimating vehicle lateral stability region, which is an important way to describe the vehicle safe or stable lateral operation capability. Benefited from the introduced local linearization method, a realistic 2D LuGre tire model can be applied to describe the coupled and nonlinear longitudinal and lateral friction forces for the stability region estimation. Compared with the estimation results from a classic phase portrait method, which does not distinguish vehicle and tire stabilities, the obtained vehicle lateral stability regions are more conservative by successfully considering vehicle and tire stability together. Simulation results discuss the variations and trends of the estimated stability regions with respect to different main parameters, such as the vehicle longitudinal velocity, tire-road friction coefficient, and steering angle.